Now that the icon has been completed, all that remains is some final testing before Ledger will be published to the AppStore. Ledger is designed as an electronic ledger and general journal. It will require some basic accounting knowledge, but should be a very efficient application for anyone with the necessary background. Attached are some pictures of the application for your enjoyment:

Backup to WebDAV will not be included in the first release, but is being strongly considered for 1.1. For now, the account balances and/or journal entries can be emailed as a CSV for use in Excel or Numbers.

Running an application for the first time on an iPhone/iPod touch is truly rewarding. After months of testing in a simulator, it’s great to finally be able to build for the real device.

I spent some time with UITextFields today and thought I should share my discovery. Apparently controls that track touch movements don’t work quite right when embedded in a UIScrollView. The solution: disable scrolling on the enclosing view when making the control first responder (or right away if scrolling is not necessary). I found the solution in the UICatalog example after scanning over the source code 5 or 6 times.

I am now finished my first iPhone application and am getting anxious to make the official announcement. That said, doing so before being accepted into the developer program probably isn’t the best idea. Hint: it’s an accounting application designed with double-entry accounting theory as the foundation.

It always makes me question an accounting application’s initial design when a developer announces that the next version will support split transactions or the ability to transfer funds between accounts. I can guarantee you that these systems were not designed by accountants. Double-entry accounting theory gives you a data model that will let you record any and every type of transaction you will ever need. The ideal data model in my opinion includes (at least) Line Items, Accounts and Transactions. Each Line Item belongs to one Account and one Transaction. Accounts and Transactions each have many Line Items.

This complexity added by double-entry (as opposed to single-entry) accounting can be quite easily hidden from the user. That said, this is one instance where there may be benefit in educating rather than accommodating the user…

Note: this post should make a little more sense when my announcement and the accompanying screenshots and videos are posted. Stay tuned.

TUAW posted yesterday that UK developers have started receiving acceptance letters for the iPhone developer program. Hopefully Canada and the rest of the world won’t be far off. I know that a developer key and some info about syncing data with desktop systems would give me that extra push to finish my accounting application.